Pirinç Han

About Pirinç Han

Pirinç Han is a historic inn in the old town below Ankara Castle, on Pirinç Sokak in the Atpazarı area of Altındağ. Today most of its rooms are shops, the majority of them run by antique dealers according to Turkish Wikipedia, and the Türkiye Turizm Ansiklopedisi describes units selling antiques and gifts. The history of the building is not settled. The most widely held view is that the original Pirinç Han was demolished in the 1930s together with the small mosque inside it and replaced by a primary school, and that the han known by the name today was created by restoring an old timber mansion. Seventeenth-century court records mention a han built by the Rumeli Kazaskeri Emin Mehmet Efendi, while some scholars say the han was endowed in 1739. The encyclopedia dates the present building to the 18th or 19th century and suggests it took the name of the demolished han. The building has three storeys around a central courtyard and is built of timber framing with mud-brick infill. It was restored in 1985 with its original features kept. A wide double wooden door on the south side opens into a long passage that leads to the rectangular courtyard, and wooden stairs connect the floors. Upper-floor rooms project over the street on wooden brackets, with sash windows and a tiled hipped roof. Turkish Wikipedia notes that the entrance wall carries the poem Han Duvarları by Faruk Nafiz Çamlıbel. The han stands just below the castle walls, so it is easy to combine with a walk around the citadel quarter.